[maxlybbert]

Why do voters need to align their preferences with the US Constitution? Even assuming that the second amendment only allows residents to own weapons for militia use, I think it’s reasonable for citizens to say they won’t be happy until that right is expanded. If nothing else, they may mean that they support an additional amendment to carve out more rights.

[scrub_tier]

Hi! Appreciate the feedback.

So you raise any interesting point. I'm only concerned about the law of the land since it's generally more or less the common ground we are forced to live on.

New question, and this is more open to derailment, but let's risk it.

ASSUME your current policy (liberal or conservative) is wrong, what what extent do you have the right to choose it anyways?

[maxlybbert]

I’m really just playing devil’s advocate. Half the time people talk about what the law is, and half the time they talk about what the law should be. In either case, it feels like half the time I want to talk about the other subject than what gets brought up.

To answer your question, you should always have the right to be wrong (e.g., choose or prefer a wrong policy). I’m sure people would prefer to say “you have an unqualified right to be wrong, but only on matters that don’t affect others.” But I’ll go further and say everyone has the right to be stubborn and thick-headed.

I am assuming that even with a right to be wrong, I don’t have a right to be violent about it, etc. It’s more “I have a right to be a crank (if I’m in the minority), and a right to vote for bad policies and expect them to be implemented (if I win and they don’t violate civil rights).”

In a democracy, the safety valves seem to be:

* usually it’s hard to prove which answer is right or wrong (society as a whole doesn’t pay much for less-than-optimal policies that aren’t actively bad)

* for policies that are actively bad, the people generally notice the high cost and change the policy.

If you think I’m wrong, or I think you’re wrong, we don’t get to steamroll each other. We have to try to convince the other side. This can be annoying, but every alternative we’ve tried has been worse. No dictator, bureau, monarch, etc. has a perfect record of always choosing right or always correcting past mistakes. So I think it’s reasonable to assume we’ll always have some mistaken policies. The question is which mistaken policies should we live with (answer: the ones we choose to live with).

I have an old game book that includes the quote “democracy guarantees the people get the government they deserve.” I’ve also heard the statement “democracy assumes the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” I agree with both statements.